'
at y PH: 842-2611
Price 35 Cents
46 pages, 3 sections
Tupelo, Mississippi, Weekend Edition, September 20-21, 1980
.
Vol. 10, No. 148
S. Green St., Ea st of Hospital
-
Nuclear-Equipped Titan Missile Explodes A rk. Residents
1 Dead, 21 Hurt;
B urned Up By
No Radioactivity
Poor Warning
Said Released
c.1980N.Y. Times Sam DAMASCUS, Ark. Hutto, up at 3 a.m . to milk his cows, came closest to the secret thing that everyone in Damascus always knew was in the ground. Hutto saw it fire up in the night sky, the boom of it shaking the ground, the orange flame shooting 300 feet straight up. Then, something dark came banging down from the sky, he told his fascinated neighbors later, an object that landed down near Route 65. "Sam said he thought it was the missile head, and he turned right there and ran," his neighbor, Jerry Hensey, related. "To heck with the cow,." Everywhere Friday morning, the 3 a .m. explosion at the Titan underground nuclear missile site , knocked terror into the sleeping residents of this dairy country hamlet. And in the hours that followed, the fright turned to anger at the government for not warning them fully, for letting MISSOURI
;
:/11:oamaacu•. l*1
Little Rock
ARKANSAS
TEXAS LOLaslANA
them go to bed reassured at midnight only to be shaken awake three hours later by the sound of the silo explosion. "We phoned each other - the government had no warning system," said Bob Collard, a , teacher at Southside High School. "All we had to rely on was the old Paul Revere system. I know they set up roadblocks without telling a lot of people - Coach Wallace from the school, for one - to get out." A new and anxious question haunted Beverly Thomas, mother of three, as she came back home after being kept 20 miles distant for 13 hours and 40 minutes . .. \ "If the missile fuel fouled up l. this time," she asked, "what's to ~ prevent the warhead from fouling up next time?" Mrs . Thomas moved here ir, May, not knowing the area wa~ ~ dotted with more than a dozen Titans buried in the land under 11 ,I tons of concrete and giant steel !\ shutters. "I 'd drive by and see ) little bitty signs near them with 'I code numbers or something, and finally my husband found out. ·i 'Hey, those a re nuclear weapons,' ~: he told me." On the day following the explosion, Mrs. Thomas was angry, she said, and "very scared." "I hope it's all burned to the ground - it' was too close to the school, anyway, only a mile or so away." ! In expressing anger at the government's evacuation plan, ) many of the more than 500 people ( who scattered in the night said they were in fact patriotic and saw that nuclear weapons had to Con_!inued on Page 181
Seared Silo
Smoke can be seen coming from the damaged silo in Damascus, Ark., Friday, above, after a Titan II missile with a nuclear warhead caught fire and exploded.
Twenty-two Air Force personnel were injured in the blast but authorities said no damage was done to the nuclear weapon. A Titan II missile is shown in its silo, right.
DAMASCUS, Ark. (UPI) Leaking fuel from a Titan II missile armed with a nuclear warhead exploded in its underground silo Friday, killing one Air Force crewman, injuring 21 others and spreading toxic fumes. About 1,000 residents were evacuated from the area and were not allowed back until late afternoon. There was no nuclear accident or radioactivity released, Defense Department officials said. The Air Force said there was no danger of more fires or explosions. " There is no need for alarm," a Defense Department official said at the Pentagon. " There was no radioactivity, nor will there be." Defense officials said the missile's warhead does not become fully armed and ready to explode until it is in flight en route to the target. One crewman, whose identity
Survey Shows State Highway Planning Lagging By NORMA FIELDS Capitol Correspondent JACKSON - A 16-state survey shows that the Mississippi Highway Commission does less planning for highway construction than most of the other Southern states - · even those with approximately the same amount of money and .same number of highway miles. The comparative study was conducted for the Southern Legislative Conference by Mississippi House Management Director J .A. "Bud" Thigpen,
who will present the findings to a finance meeting of the SLC later this month in Myrtle Beach, S.C. The survey covers sources and amounts of revenue received for highway construction in the 16 states, number of miles on each system, whether the state has a transportation plan and, if so, what it covers, what kind of planning studies are done before roads are built, whether a state has long-range and/or shortrange construction plans and how often they are changed, CQ~a~t documents and cost estimates.
Several other questions concerning how contracts and change orders are handled were also included in the questionnaire sent to the proper· authorities in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississip'p i, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia.Each state reviewed the findings twice before the report was compiled. Georgia was the only state that did not respond, but some data was obtained from
a preliminary questionnaire. Mississippi's nine cents per gallon state-imposed gasoline ta x is by no means the highest in the Southern region. Alabama now imposes an 11-cent tax, although the financial data in the survey is based on its fiscal 1979 seven-cent tax. Arkansas imposes 91h cents, North Carolina, 9~ cents, South Carolina, 10 cents, and West Virginia, lOlh cents. Virginia , Maryland, and Kentucky each impose nine cents p_er gallon, as Continued on Page 18
Library Fri-ends Volunteer Ta"lents, Funds By PHYLLIS HARPER Feature Editor What are friends for? Well, Friends of Lee County Library are for a lot of things all of them good for the institution they support. Organized less than four years ago, the local group has already produced some impressive results in support and purchase of equipment for the library. , The concept of the Friends is not a new one, according to material researched by Marlha
weekend feature Means, retired reference librarian and a member of the organization. In the 18th century book collections often were ~stablished and maintained through the efforts of citizen groups, she said. This sort of support has continued to be the mainstay in establishing and maintaining good libraries.
A Library Company of Philadelphia was founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1731, and in Virginia, the Alexandria Library Company formed in 1774 by citizens' efforts. Recently, a survey of 50 states revealed more than 1,000 "friends" groups with a total membership in excess of 100,000 persons.
"Friends are those c1v1cminded men an·d wom en who know that any community is a better place to live if that community has first rate libraries," said Mrs. Means. "They know that a libra ry developed accordin g to professional standards tou ches lives from the pre-schooler to the senior citizen, from the learning-to-read adult to the . specialists in t ec hni ca l Continued on Page 18
U.S. Scientist Says Shroud Of Turin 'Fake' LONDON (UPI) An American scientist believes the Shroud of Turin, the mysterious cloth respected by many Christians, including some popes, as the burial shroud of Jesus, "is a fake" painted by a clever medieval artist. Dr. Walter Mccrone, a member of the American research team that exhaustively tested the shroud two years ago, described his finding at a closed meeting of the British Society for the Turin Shroud in London last week.
Ian Wilson, who chaired the meeting and is author of "The Turin Shroud," Friday confirmed Mccrone "came to the conclusion that the Turin Shroud was the work of a clever artist in the 14th cent'ury." The Shroud's brownish marks form a negative imprint of a human body with a bearded face similar to most reilgious "portraits" of Christ. The image has been described as a "boiling up of the surface material of the actual threads," which some
believe was caused by a burst of radiant heat linked with the resurrection of Jesus . But Mccrone said microscopic examination of residue lifted from the cloth during tests by 27 U.S. scientists in October 1978 found red iron oxide similar to a'rtists' iron rich earth pigments, such as red ochre. The team's findings are to be released Oct. 15. "I believe it is a fake, but I cannot prove it," Mccrone was quoted as saying by the Catholic
Tribune, which broke the story. "There is a gr eat deal of artist 's pigment on the shroud. A m ajor portion of the image is in a rtist pigment. How he did it, I ca nnot say," McCrone said . Mccrone said he thought a Carbon 14 dating test would prove the Shroud was maae in the 14th century . Church officials ha ve refused to allow a Ca rbon 14 test because a s mall a mount of Continued on Page 18
was not released pending notification of relatives, died in a hospital. After extensive tests that lasted most of the day, state health officials sent evacuated residents back to their homes about 4:30 p.m . Friday. Dr. Robert Young, director of the state Department of Health, said officials from the NRC, nuclear specialists from Kirkland Air Force Base in New Mexico and Strategic Air Command authorities from Omaha, Neb., checked a five -mile radius area near the missile with sensitive electronic equipment. Lee Collard of the state Office of E mergency Services, also said Air Force officials were going home Friday afternoon "because they 've just about wrapped up e ve rything they can do here." A SAC spokesman in Omaha said 18 of th e 22 injured Air Force personnel remained hospitalized. Most of the injured airmen had been called to repair a leak in a fuel t a nk of the Titan II missile . President Carter ordered the Defen se D e partm e nt to investigate the cause of the explosion and to inspect the 53 othe r Titan installations in the nation. Eighteen of the Titans are in Arkan s as. They are intercontinental ballistic missiles 103 feet high and 10 feet in diameter that can deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere in the
Continued on Page 18
briefly~--------........
- - - - - - - - - -- - - - w e- athe-r
highlights expanded View magazine, included in today's Daily Journal, has expanded its TV section to include program listings from . WGN of Chicago, WOR of New York and the Entertainment Sports Network, which are broadcast by some Northeast Miss issippi cable systems.
carter retreating · President Carter plans to spend the weekend at the Camp David retreat, while Ronald Reaean and John Anderson m eet in the first presidential debate Sunday in Baltimore. Page 12.
study seen Redistribution of the money paid by Tennessee Valle y Authority in lieu of ad valorem taxes may be studied by the interim House TennesseeTombigbee Bridge Study Committee. Page 3.
f und repayment studied
President Carter
Tupelo city and s chool officials agree a quarter-million dollar e rror was made in the city accounting department, but the · question is how and when it can be correc ted. Page 5.
tupelo Wins The Tupelo Golden Wave defeated the Corinth Warriors Friday night in Corintlt 26 to 10, Page 21. For other area high school scores, Page 23.
Partly cloudy. High 90s; low
Tupelo 26
, 60s . Sunrise 6:46 ; sunset ·7:02. Deta ils on page 18.
index
bond issu ance ok'd Aberdeen has been given the OK to issue $350,000 in industrial re venue bonds for construction of a new industry expected to create 120 jobs by the end of the ye a r, city attorn e y David Houston III said Friday. Page 5.
---
Corinth 10
..
I
About People . . .. . ... . ... ... . 12 Around Mississippi. . . .. . ... . .. 8 Churc h Notices ... . ........ lCHl Classified . . . ...... . ..... .. 25-31 Comics .... . .. . ... . . . . .. .. . .. 19 Editorial ... ·. .. . . .. . ..... ..... . 8 Look At Lee .. . . . . . . . .. ... . . .. 17 Markets ... ........ . . . . .. .. . .. 9 Mississippi Living . ........ 14-16 Movies . .... . .. . . .. .. . . .. .. .. 17 Obituaries . . ............... .. 18 Sports... . .... . ... .•. ..... . 21-24 What's Happening .... . ... , .. 29 World Briefs ........ .. . .. . .. .. 9